Waving bye to land disputes

Julian Chilipa of Chinseu Village, Traditional Authority (T/A) Mlumbe in Zomba feels hard done by land disputes.

Her family became an easy target as they lived on the customary land without legal proof that they owned it.

 “We constantly quarrelled with neighbours, relatives, and community leaders who overstepped the boundaries,” she says.

The mother of four saw the plot shrinking as it passed from one generation to another

“My great-grandparents lived here and tilled this soil. This is the only inheritance and source of income for us, our children and generations to come,” she says.

In May 2023, Chilipa registered the piece of land with the Ministry of Lands to get a certificate to assert her grip on her most prized asset.

“The certificate in my name put a close to the rumbling disputes,” she says.

The government has rolled out land registration nationwide in keeping with modernised land laws.

About 92 percent of land in Malawi is not registered.

Accompanied by the possible claimants and village committee members, the surveyors from the ministry map the land plot by plot for the rightful owners to get legal certificates of customary estates.

The Malawi Watershed Services Project (Mwasip), funded by the World Bank, promotes land registration for productive use and conservation.

Chilipa says registering her plot gives her power and peace of mind.

“We own this land legally,” she says. “The plots will remain in our family even if I die today. In case of any attempted land grabbing, the certificate will set my children free,” she says, smilingly.

Since 2020, the Mkasala Customary Land Committee has been going door-to-door in their rural community to share the importance of land registration.

Emmanuel Wisiki, one of the six committee members, says the majority were eager to register their land.

“We emphasised that the process required by law was free of charge and the certificates will protect their right to own land and shield them from displacement,” he says.

The initiative registered about 16 000 pieces of land belonging to over 5 700 households in Mkasala and Fikila villages in Sub-Traditional Authority Mkapita.

White Mjambe of Mkasala Village says the security of tenure encouraged him to establish water and land conservation structures on his four-acre registered land.

“I feel motivated and will do anything to conserve my land for bumper crop yields and economic activities as we own it for a lifetime,” he says.

Mjambe and other locals in Chingale Catchment Area have established water harvesting structures such as check dams, eyebrow basins, deep trenches, and swales in their registered land parcels and communal zones.

They have also created stone bunds on the slopes, planted trees and allowed tree stumps and shrubs to sprout again.

Conservation of soil, water and green cover is crucial to building their resilience to environmental degradation and climate change, says Mkapita.

He is happy that land restoration and conservation efforts are rising as land-related disputes fall.

“This has improved the governance of customary land as every piece of land has a name attached to it and was demarcated after the neighbours and the committee had ironed out their differences,” he says.

As the preventable disputes become history, community members have more time for farming, businesses and other activities to end poverty.

Ministry of Lands senior land registrar Anthony Nzima says this is crucial for sustainable community development.

He says: “With land registration, people know the sizes of their fields to plan and do farming as a business. They can use their registered land as collateral to get bank loans to pursue their entrepreneurial dreams. The better part is that they are conserving the environment for their resilience to climatic shocks.”